Minutes of October 29, 2008 Meeting

Budget Update

Gaunt shared with the committee the current thinking in the Libraries about dealing with a potential budget give
back as of January 2009 and a permanent reduction as of July 1, 2009. The target reduction for the Libraries is
$934,000. This can be apportioned to the three main budget categories: salaries (permanent staff), collections,
or operations (includes hourly labor). In early fall the Libraries imposed an internal freeze on all vacancies in
various stages of recruitment to allow flexibility in handling any expected reduction. This action resulted in 22
positions (faculty and staff) being frozen representing $1.2M in salary savings for the fiscal year. This would
allow us to re-examine positions to be recruited in light of reductions, return some vacant positions, and avoid
layoffs.

Considering the magnitude of the reduction, taking a cut in operations would not be feasible nor would it free
substantial funds. Therefore, the reduction will be apportioned to positions (salary) and collections. In
deciding the percentages to each category, Gaunt asked Sewell to determine what could "reasonably" be reduced in
collections, as most invoices have already been paid. A target of $300K was recommended based on current
subscriptions; the remaining $634K would come from giving back positions. Gaunt noted that we have a long list of
collection requests from faculty totally close to $2M, and we know that faculty and graduate students are not
satisfied with our current collecting levels. These are difficult decisions that challenge what it means to be a
research library.

The Libraries will continue to collaborate with colleagues on interlibrary loans to expand collection access, and
on ways to make such loans easier, faster, and more efficient for users and staff alike. Committee members noted
that not having collections that our peers make available puts us at a disadvantage when recruiting faculty
graduate students, in particular. Concern was expressed for the future of graduate programs. McGill mentioned the
new ways that humanists can interrogate texts by having huge corpora, such as the Early English Books, available.
Research that was impossible before is now a reality. Our faculty and students need to have this opportunity for
research-it can't be delivered via interlibrary loan.

Gaunt and Sewell also noted that our state collections budget does not include monographs, which have been
reduced steadily over the last few years due primarily to the increasing cost of science databases. The bundling
of journals into expensive packages means that the Libraries must pay for titles they would not ordinarily
acquire. Unfortunately, some publishers and vendors make it financially impossible to reduce the subscriptions to
incur savings because of their pricing models.

But, the Libraries do not recommend protecting collections further at the expense of staff. The Libraries operate
across three campuses with many facilities requiring staffing. While we have considered closing the science
branches, we have no space to maintain the print collections that are not yet digitized. A consolidated science
library is planned for the future. We also know that the information and technology environment is changing
rapidly. The Libraries need to plan for and respond to new and powerful ways to support research and instruction,
which will require disciplinary liaisons and technologically capable staff. In addition, we have more
opportunities to raise external support for collections than we do for staffing, which most donors believe should
come from the university.

Gaunt noted that our staff has been working on several open source initiatives funded through external grants. We
see this as our future, and hope to move to an open-source infrastructure over the next five years. In order to
do so, however we need to develop programming expertise in-house through the redesign of staffing models. We are
currently building out that infrastructure by working on grants from the IMLS and the Getty and Mellon
foundations. Some of these grants are also helping us build state-wide capabilities that the Rutgers University
Libraries are leading. In the end, this infrastructure will support more powerful services for faculty and
students and cost less in maintenance than our proprietary systems. It will, however, take creativity with
staffing to get us there. Thus, we must be cautious when returning positions in budget reductions.

After some additional discussion, the committee endorsed the Libraries strategies to meet the budget challenges
ahead.

Scholarly Communications Symposium

Gaunt noted that five years ago the Libraries and the VP for Academic Affairs co-sponsored a half-day symposium
on scholarly communication that was attended by nearly 100 faculty and was extremely well received. In the last
five years, much has changed and there are now even more pressing needs to re-examine this topic.

The annual increase in the cost of information regularly exceeds inflation, and this has continued for the last
ten years. Universities clearly cannot support this situation. The increase is especially high in science and
some of the social sciences. There is very little for libraries to do except to purchase databases through
consortiums, but even there the prices remain high. The journal business is monopolistic, which makes it
difficult to apply any pressure on publishers to reduce costs. The only way to deal with this crisis is for the
faculty to act, because they are the creators of the information. The information technology environment has
changed considerably in the last five years and there are now options for creative solutions - publishing in open
access journals is one. Gaunt and Sewell reminded the committee that when librarians speak of "open access" they
are referring to peer-reviewed scholarship that is made freely accessible and not self-publishing on the web.

The Rutgers University Libraries already publish three journals using the "open journal" publishing system. There
are other ways to use the Internet to reconsider how articles are vetted and how recognition is awarded. The
National Institute of Health's new mandate that articles written based on NIH funding be deposited in
PubMedCentral is an example of open access. Universities, such as Harvard, have responded to the open access
movement by passing university senate resolutions for their faculty to make their publications openly accessible
through their university's repositories or on their websites. Data shows that more recognition accrues to the
author when more individuals have access to their work.

The committee responded that faculty recognition is often based on the brand recognition of the journal. Morrel
is an editor of an Elsevier journal of high regard, and she realizes that it is important to retain the high
quality of the articles published there. The faculty do contribute their expertise to review the submissions, and
recognition is given to authors. Masschaele wondered if we are missing opportunities to use new technologies to
create scholarship in other ways that is not dependent on the "standard" ways of scholarly recognition, such as
the book and brand-name journals. Are there other ways to confer recognition-downloads, citations, use, etc.?
Pazzani responded that the PRC pays attention to the impact of the scholarship, not just the place where it was
published, even if the unit fails to do so. McGill discussed how the humanities are going digital, providing new
opportunities for research, and how open access is one way to make more humanities scholarship available. We need
to be sure that "new" scholarship is being appropriately recognized. The faculty wondered if this is the time to
reconsider how the departments evaluate scholarship in their discipline. The Exec. VP for Academic Affairs might
ask each department to consider this, and then it would be recognized at the highest levels for recognition and
reward.

Wasserman noted that scholarly presses and scholarly books are under tremendous pressure and university presses
are looking at ways to make the "sustained argument" affordable. She noted that it is easier for a journal to
move to open access than a book. Others responded that scholarly societies have not developed good business
models to transition their journals to open access. Some wondered about the online purchase of book chapters,
other ways to access the book, and the future of the book itself.

Boyle noted that faculty may not be aware that they sign publishers agreements that restrict their access to
their own scholarship and that they may need assistance in knowing how to read agreements or what to ask of their
publishers.

The committee agreed that it is time for another symposium that touches on all of these important issues and that
cuts across all the disciplines and information formats (book/journals). We should engage the university
administration on this topic as it is critical for the future of the academy. A half-day symposium could set the
stage for additional follow-up discussions that are more granular. If possible, we should try for the Spring
semester. Gaunt offered to have a small internal group in the Libraries draft an agenda for discussion of the
full committee.